Common Sense Note
Parents need to know this game puts players in control of a hitman in a seedy world occupied by drug dealers, prostitutes, murderers, pornographers, mobsters, etc. The name of the game is murder, including lots of violence, such as shootings, strangulations, and immolations. The game does encourage players to spare innocents and keep the mayhem low. Still, the game features plenty of other adult material, including swearing, sexual themes, drinking and drug use, and story elements like child prostitution.
Families can talk about the game's adult themes. Why do you think people like to play games that are so violent? Are violent games always bad for people, or can they be a safe fantasy? Parents: You might want to prepare yourself first by reading our report Violent Video Games and Our Kids.
Common Sense Review
Reviewed By: Chris Jozefowicz
There's no doubt that this is a game for adults only. After all, it does feature a hitman hero. And some grizzly violence. But mature players will find HITMAN: BLOOD MONEY to be a smart, consistently satisfying puzzler in action-game form.
In the fourth installment in the Hitman series, players again assume the role of a cloned human named 47, an amoral gun-for-hire. Not only is he the hunter, but he's also the hunted, and players follow his adventures through a twisting plot filled with black humor as they discover who wants 47 dead.
Story aside, Blood Money stays pretty close to the series formula. Across a dozen missions, players kill for money, stalking their prey through a variety of settings, from a Paris opera house to casinos in Las Vegas.
The excellence of the game lies in the level design. Each mission takes place in large environments populated by scores of characters, with multiple paths to the objective.
While players might be able to use 47's small arsenal to blast through a level (at least on easier difficulty settings), killing not just their targets but security personnel and witnesses as well, the game is best enjoyed as a series of stealth puzzles. The highest achievements come to players who set up their kills to look like accidents, minimizing casualties and staying under the radar of the authorities.
These stealth executions can become downright baroque, involving a lot of surveillance, multiple costume changes, stealing keys, a few kills with a garroting wire, hiding bodies, setting up booby traps and back-up booby traps, removing security camera video cassettes, and plotting escape routes.
The downside of this style of gameplay is that some levels take a lot of trial-and-error replaying.
Blood Money gives plenty of incentives for achieving quiet, minimally violent executions. Some of the new installment's innovations include a notoriety system -- messy kills lead to easy detection by witnesses and guards in future levels -- and money that can be used to upgrade weapons and lower notoriety by buying off cops.
Still, these new additions are relatively minor. The appeal of Blood Money rests on proven stealth dynamics and a solid, cinematic presentation. This is a prize pick for adult fans of the genre who don't mind the gritty subject matter.
Rate It!
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Sexual ContentWomen are often presented in bikinis or other partial dress. Sexually suggestive situations, innuendo, and pornography figure into the plot. |
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ViolenceLots of graphic murder. Shootings, stabbings, and explosives are just the beginning. Lots of creative killing with an assortment of weapons, from barbells to garroting wire. |
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LanguageRarely excessive, but players will hear swearing ("f--k") and racial name-calling ("cracker"). |
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Social BehaviorThe hero is a hitman. Police can be bribed. |
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CommercialismPart of a series. |
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Drug/Alcohol/TobaccoDrinking and smoking figure into the background in many levels. The narrative sometimes includes drug references. |
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